chalkitdown1
Member
I think for a lot of us, Christmas or the December holiday period in general, is a special time of the year to be playing games, especially when growing up. Hell, I'm not even religious and I still fucking love it. A lot of us either received a game (or 2) as Christmas presents or later when were were all growns up, saved one especially to play during this period, I know I did (and still do) anyway.
So, I decided to spend half my night going through lists of releases for the last quarter century and racking my brain to remember what games I played over this period every year and then spend 3 hours writing about it in bed. On my phone. Turns out it's quite a diverse list and there are some nice and not-so-nice memories to go along with them, so here they are. I'm gonna split it into two parts as it's a lot to read through. My childhood years first, I'll post the grown-up years at a later date.
Share your own memories if you can remember. If not the stories to go along with them, then just the list of games themselves.
So without further ado, here's a wall of text...
1991
Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES) & Low G Man (NES)
This is the first Christmas that I can truly remember. I was 7 at the time and we had just moved house 2 months earlier, from the countryside to a average sized town. My older brother had only recently gotten a NES for Christmas in 1990 after we had both grown playing on my cousin's Amstrad CPC up until that point. Low G Man is still one of my favourite games on the console. I actually wasn't a very big fan of Super Mario 3, in fact, I was more into Mega Man and Probotector (Contra in the US) type games at the time and didn't really get into the Mario series until Super Mario World on the SNES the next year.
1992
Kirby's Dreamland (Game Boy) & Zelda A Link to the Past (SNES)
Memorable one this, as I had skateboarded, head first, into a wall a few weeks before while racing some friends down a hill and fucked up my mouth/teeth pretty bad. I was one of those idiots who couldn't stand up on a skateboard and preferred to kneel down (I think all of my friends at the time did this actually). Anyway, a good friend and neighbour of mine and fellow skateboard racer let me borrow his Game Boy and some games while I got better (I didn't get my own Game Boy until next christmas). Kirby is the game I liked the most from his selection of games that included Tetris and Super Mario Land amongst others and is the Game Boy game I still have the fondest memories of.
My brother, meanwhile, got Zelda ALTTP and I spent more time watching him playing it than doing so myself. I'm ashamed to admit that I never actually completed the game until the remake on the Game Boy Advance a decade later.
1993
Links Awakening (Game Boy) & Super Mario Bros. All Stars (SNES)
Along with my shiny new Game Boy, I got what is still my favourite portable Zelda. Spent about 2 months 100%ing it. This was also the first Christmas where I was given games exclusively for me since the consoles were actually my brother's so the games were always either for him or we had to share, however the Game Boy was all mine. The brother got Mario All Stars and I played Super Mario Bros 2(the western version) for the first time. I had just gotten into the series with Super Mario World which was released with the SNES during the Summer and this is why I like SMB2 better than 3 which I hadn't really put any quality time into the Christmas that I got it.
1994
Donkey Kong Country (SNES) & Donkey Kong 94 (Game Boy)
Same as last year, my brother got a console game and I got a portable one. I was truly blown away, as most were, by the graphics in DKC and I actually ended up playing it far more than my brother. He was in his mid-teens at this point and slowly growing out of games (but more on that later) so he didn't play much any more except Street Fighter 2 Turbo (he was a Guile Sonic Boom spammer, I hated him so much) and, later, the International Superstar Soccer series which we played together all the time.
1995
Yoshi's Island (SNES) & DKC 2 (SNES)
The SNES was basically mine at this point and I asked for these two sequels to games I put hours and hours into. I had become kind of a Nintendo fanboy over the early 90's and grew to dislike the Mega Drive which some of my friends had. (Though I still played a lot of Sonic, Kid Chameleon, Streets of Rage & Eternal Champions at their houses). I had heard about the Playstation from Nintendo magazines but I didn't have much interest in it. I was, of course, looking forward to the arrival of the Ultra 64.
1996
Resident Evil, Tomb Raider & (for some reason) Motor Toon Grand Prix) (Playstation)
Well now. With the SNES on its dying legs and the N64 delayed until March 97 in PAL land, my brother picked up a Playstation and those games mentioned above. I never actually played much of it, some Motor Toon Grand Prix but that was it. I did however enjoy watching my brother and cousin play the other two, especially Tomb Raider. I remember I used to be the guide, reading from walkthroughs in a magazine and directing them on where to go and how to find secrets etc. I found the game really difficult and confusing so I actually preferred to watch them play it. My cousin actually played it more than my brother or I did. The only game I got for myself around this time was Donkey Kong Country 3 on the SNES but I remember not playing it very much as I was kinda burned out from the yearly releases.
1997
Goldeneye and Diddy Kong Racing (N64)
This was a fucked up year. Turns out my brother had gotten sick of the Playstation really fast and sold it to a friend to buy an N64 in March. I fell in love with the console immediately and these were the two games I got for Christmas. Then, disaster struck. Right after Christmas, my fucking brother, for some goddamn reason, got rid of the N64 which I loved so dearly and SWAPPED it with the same friend for the very same Playstation he had shown the door earlier in the year. I remember being livid. I hadn't even finished Goldeneye.
However, a couple of months later into 98 my brother was pretty much done with videogames. He never played the Playstation any more. I used all the pocket money I had been saving up for who knows how long and I bought back the N64 from the very same guy again. It was the first ever console that was actually mine! I still have it to this day and play Mario Kart 64 and Smash Bros with my old friends when I go to my home town every Christmas. It is, and probably always will be, my favourite console. It's likely more coincidental than anything. It just came out at the right time in my childhood. I imagine most people have consoles like this. I gave the Playstation to my cousin I think.
1998
Zelda Ocarina of Time & Turok 2 (N64)
An odd Christmas full of mixed emotions, this. Zelda was actually released on the day that my grandmother passed away. She was the one who raised me, not my mother, so it was extra tough. My brother bought Zelda for me and put it under the Christmas tree a week early. I knew exactly what was in the wrapping as I had asked for it and he warned me not to dare open it before Christmas eve. Of course I opened it. Many times. He was working late at the time and most nights I would carefully take it out of the wrapping and sneak in a few hours play before he came home. I always deleted my save file when I was done in case he ever checked it so I had to replay the opening few hours over and over. I think I the furthest I ever got was Lon Lon Ranch before I had to tuck it away under the tree again. I never did get caught and I have no idea if he ever suspected that I was playing it almost every night. The other game was Turok 2 and he played it more than I did as, similar to Tomb Raider, I found it to be too confusing. It's still confusing as fuck even today I think! This was also the last year I saw my brother play anything videogame related. After this, he had completely moved on to other things and never looked back. He was big into dance music and started DJing clubs and shit like that. Totally different world. Kinda sad really, thinking back on it. We used to play so much when we were growing up but went in completely different directions as we went through our teenage years, and now today, he lives in New Zealand and I live in Colombia, both originally from Ireland. We haven't seen each other in 5 years and rarely speak. I'll always have those wonderful memories of playing the SNES with him while growing up, though.
1999
Smash Bros (N64) & Pokemon Red (Game Boy)
I was totally fucking obsessed with the first Pokemon. I had a gigantic poster on the ceiling (yes the ceiling) with all 151 'mons on it that I would mark off one by one as I caught them in-game. I had to put it on the ceiling as I shared a room with my brother and he wouldn't let me take down any of his posters (of Aliens, Friends, The Matrix and various DJs among others) to put up mine, so on the ceiling it had to go. I used to stare at it all night. I never got all 151 Pokemon, I think I got to the high 140's or thereabouts. This was actually the first and last Pokemon game I played. I never got into it again after the year long obsession I had with it. I should probably try again some day.
As for Smash Bros, easily one of my favourite games on the system and still the version my friends and I always return to when we get together. I was happy that it finally got released because it came out almost a year later after Japan, the PAL release delays those days were bloody ridiculous.
2000
Zelda Majora's Mask (N64)
The sequel to the best game ever does not a bad Christmas make. No one died this time either which made it even better. I have one special memory of playing this. It rarely snows in Ireland around Christmas time (it's usually in January or February if at all). So on the day after Christmas, I was in the Snowhead region of the game not paying attention to what was going on outside and didn't notice until I got up to go to the bathroom that it was in fact snowing outside. It was just a wonderful moment. I love snow and I'm fairly sure this was the last year it snowed anytime close to Christmas in Ireland, at least in my part of the country.
2001
Fucking nothin. (Nothing) The worst christmas ever. Not a good time to be a Nintendo fanboy in Europe. The N64 was dead. The last game to be released for it was Excitebike 64 that Summer, again, a year late (14 months after the US!!!). The GameCube had just been released Stateside and delayed until May in Europe) and I was jealous as fuck. All those amazing new games and I had absolutely nothing to play. The game I played closest to the end of the year was Zelda Oracle of Seasons which was ok, not one of my favourite Zeldas. I was such a hardened Nintendo fanboy at the time that I held out on picking up a PS2 or Dreamcast.
2002
Die Hard Vendetta & StarFox Adventures (GameCube)
Almost tied with the previous year as the worst ever but at least I had something to play, even if I didn't like either of them. Starfox bored the ever living shit out of me and I never got around to finishing it for weeks. Does Hard I only got because I was a huge fan of the movie and there was nothing else out. It was ok I guess.
But then to make matters worse, my sort of estranged mother at this point had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in October. It was just awful.
So that was not a good Christmas. At all. My mother passed in March the following year, funnily enough on the day Resident Evil 0, another game I was hugely looking forward to, was released (why does this keep happening to me?!?l). It also happened again last year, stay tuned.
So, between this Christmas and the next I turned 18 and finished school so that's the end of my childhood as a gamer. Next up: the grown up years.
To be continued...
So, I decided to spend half my night going through lists of releases for the last quarter century and racking my brain to remember what games I played over this period every year and then spend 3 hours writing about it in bed. On my phone. Turns out it's quite a diverse list and there are some nice and not-so-nice memories to go along with them, so here they are. I'm gonna split it into two parts as it's a lot to read through. My childhood years first, I'll post the grown-up years at a later date.
Share your own memories if you can remember. If not the stories to go along with them, then just the list of games themselves.
So without further ado, here's a wall of text...
1991
Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES) & Low G Man (NES)
This is the first Christmas that I can truly remember. I was 7 at the time and we had just moved house 2 months earlier, from the countryside to a average sized town. My older brother had only recently gotten a NES for Christmas in 1990 after we had both grown playing on my cousin's Amstrad CPC up until that point. Low G Man is still one of my favourite games on the console. I actually wasn't a very big fan of Super Mario 3, in fact, I was more into Mega Man and Probotector (Contra in the US) type games at the time and didn't really get into the Mario series until Super Mario World on the SNES the next year.
1992
Kirby's Dreamland (Game Boy) & Zelda A Link to the Past (SNES)
Memorable one this, as I had skateboarded, head first, into a wall a few weeks before while racing some friends down a hill and fucked up my mouth/teeth pretty bad. I was one of those idiots who couldn't stand up on a skateboard and preferred to kneel down (I think all of my friends at the time did this actually). Anyway, a good friend and neighbour of mine and fellow skateboard racer let me borrow his Game Boy and some games while I got better (I didn't get my own Game Boy until next christmas). Kirby is the game I liked the most from his selection of games that included Tetris and Super Mario Land amongst others and is the Game Boy game I still have the fondest memories of.
My brother, meanwhile, got Zelda ALTTP and I spent more time watching him playing it than doing so myself. I'm ashamed to admit that I never actually completed the game until the remake on the Game Boy Advance a decade later.
1993
Links Awakening (Game Boy) & Super Mario Bros. All Stars (SNES)
Along with my shiny new Game Boy, I got what is still my favourite portable Zelda. Spent about 2 months 100%ing it. This was also the first Christmas where I was given games exclusively for me since the consoles were actually my brother's so the games were always either for him or we had to share, however the Game Boy was all mine. The brother got Mario All Stars and I played Super Mario Bros 2(the western version) for the first time. I had just gotten into the series with Super Mario World which was released with the SNES during the Summer and this is why I like SMB2 better than 3 which I hadn't really put any quality time into the Christmas that I got it.
1994
Donkey Kong Country (SNES) & Donkey Kong 94 (Game Boy)
Same as last year, my brother got a console game and I got a portable one. I was truly blown away, as most were, by the graphics in DKC and I actually ended up playing it far more than my brother. He was in his mid-teens at this point and slowly growing out of games (but more on that later) so he didn't play much any more except Street Fighter 2 Turbo (he was a Guile Sonic Boom spammer, I hated him so much) and, later, the International Superstar Soccer series which we played together all the time.
1995
Yoshi's Island (SNES) & DKC 2 (SNES)
The SNES was basically mine at this point and I asked for these two sequels to games I put hours and hours into. I had become kind of a Nintendo fanboy over the early 90's and grew to dislike the Mega Drive which some of my friends had. (Though I still played a lot of Sonic, Kid Chameleon, Streets of Rage & Eternal Champions at their houses). I had heard about the Playstation from Nintendo magazines but I didn't have much interest in it. I was, of course, looking forward to the arrival of the Ultra 64.
1996
Resident Evil, Tomb Raider & (for some reason) Motor Toon Grand Prix) (Playstation)
Well now. With the SNES on its dying legs and the N64 delayed until March 97 in PAL land, my brother picked up a Playstation and those games mentioned above. I never actually played much of it, some Motor Toon Grand Prix but that was it. I did however enjoy watching my brother and cousin play the other two, especially Tomb Raider. I remember I used to be the guide, reading from walkthroughs in a magazine and directing them on where to go and how to find secrets etc. I found the game really difficult and confusing so I actually preferred to watch them play it. My cousin actually played it more than my brother or I did. The only game I got for myself around this time was Donkey Kong Country 3 on the SNES but I remember not playing it very much as I was kinda burned out from the yearly releases.
1997
Goldeneye and Diddy Kong Racing (N64)
This was a fucked up year. Turns out my brother had gotten sick of the Playstation really fast and sold it to a friend to buy an N64 in March. I fell in love with the console immediately and these were the two games I got for Christmas. Then, disaster struck. Right after Christmas, my fucking brother, for some goddamn reason, got rid of the N64 which I loved so dearly and SWAPPED it with the same friend for the very same Playstation he had shown the door earlier in the year. I remember being livid. I hadn't even finished Goldeneye.
However, a couple of months later into 98 my brother was pretty much done with videogames. He never played the Playstation any more. I used all the pocket money I had been saving up for who knows how long and I bought back the N64 from the very same guy again. It was the first ever console that was actually mine! I still have it to this day and play Mario Kart 64 and Smash Bros with my old friends when I go to my home town every Christmas. It is, and probably always will be, my favourite console. It's likely more coincidental than anything. It just came out at the right time in my childhood. I imagine most people have consoles like this. I gave the Playstation to my cousin I think.
1998
Zelda Ocarina of Time & Turok 2 (N64)
An odd Christmas full of mixed emotions, this. Zelda was actually released on the day that my grandmother passed away. She was the one who raised me, not my mother, so it was extra tough. My brother bought Zelda for me and put it under the Christmas tree a week early. I knew exactly what was in the wrapping as I had asked for it and he warned me not to dare open it before Christmas eve. Of course I opened it. Many times. He was working late at the time and most nights I would carefully take it out of the wrapping and sneak in a few hours play before he came home. I always deleted my save file when I was done in case he ever checked it so I had to replay the opening few hours over and over. I think I the furthest I ever got was Lon Lon Ranch before I had to tuck it away under the tree again. I never did get caught and I have no idea if he ever suspected that I was playing it almost every night. The other game was Turok 2 and he played it more than I did as, similar to Tomb Raider, I found it to be too confusing. It's still confusing as fuck even today I think! This was also the last year I saw my brother play anything videogame related. After this, he had completely moved on to other things and never looked back. He was big into dance music and started DJing clubs and shit like that. Totally different world. Kinda sad really, thinking back on it. We used to play so much when we were growing up but went in completely different directions as we went through our teenage years, and now today, he lives in New Zealand and I live in Colombia, both originally from Ireland. We haven't seen each other in 5 years and rarely speak. I'll always have those wonderful memories of playing the SNES with him while growing up, though.
1999
Smash Bros (N64) & Pokemon Red (Game Boy)
I was totally fucking obsessed with the first Pokemon. I had a gigantic poster on the ceiling (yes the ceiling) with all 151 'mons on it that I would mark off one by one as I caught them in-game. I had to put it on the ceiling as I shared a room with my brother and he wouldn't let me take down any of his posters (of Aliens, Friends, The Matrix and various DJs among others) to put up mine, so on the ceiling it had to go. I used to stare at it all night. I never got all 151 Pokemon, I think I got to the high 140's or thereabouts. This was actually the first and last Pokemon game I played. I never got into it again after the year long obsession I had with it. I should probably try again some day.
As for Smash Bros, easily one of my favourite games on the system and still the version my friends and I always return to when we get together. I was happy that it finally got released because it came out almost a year later after Japan, the PAL release delays those days were bloody ridiculous.
2000
Zelda Majora's Mask (N64)
The sequel to the best game ever does not a bad Christmas make. No one died this time either which made it even better. I have one special memory of playing this. It rarely snows in Ireland around Christmas time (it's usually in January or February if at all). So on the day after Christmas, I was in the Snowhead region of the game not paying attention to what was going on outside and didn't notice until I got up to go to the bathroom that it was in fact snowing outside. It was just a wonderful moment. I love snow and I'm fairly sure this was the last year it snowed anytime close to Christmas in Ireland, at least in my part of the country.
2001
Fucking nothin. (Nothing) The worst christmas ever. Not a good time to be a Nintendo fanboy in Europe. The N64 was dead. The last game to be released for it was Excitebike 64 that Summer, again, a year late (14 months after the US!!!). The GameCube had just been released Stateside and delayed until May in Europe) and I was jealous as fuck. All those amazing new games and I had absolutely nothing to play. The game I played closest to the end of the year was Zelda Oracle of Seasons which was ok, not one of my favourite Zeldas. I was such a hardened Nintendo fanboy at the time that I held out on picking up a PS2 or Dreamcast.
2002
Die Hard Vendetta & StarFox Adventures (GameCube)
Almost tied with the previous year as the worst ever but at least I had something to play, even if I didn't like either of them. Starfox bored the ever living shit out of me and I never got around to finishing it for weeks. Does Hard I only got because I was a huge fan of the movie and there was nothing else out. It was ok I guess.
But then to make matters worse, my sort of estranged mother at this point had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in October. It was just awful.
So that was not a good Christmas. At all. My mother passed in March the following year, funnily enough on the day Resident Evil 0, another game I was hugely looking forward to, was released (why does this keep happening to me?!?l). It also happened again last year, stay tuned.
So, between this Christmas and the next I turned 18 and finished school so that's the end of my childhood as a gamer. Next up: the grown up years.
To be continued...